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Clerics all get a Divine Font for Heals or Harms depending upon the deity, so I figured it would only be fair for the Druid to get a Primal Font based upon his Druidic Order. Like the Divine font, it would be a special pool of spell slots (1+ Charisma modifier) that scales by level and can only be used for certain spells.
Order of Animals: Cast Summon Animal
Order of the Leaf:Cast Summon Plants and Fungi
Order of Storms:Cast Summon Elemental, but only Air and Water Elementals. Because this is a level 2 spell minimum, the level 1 spells would be Gust of Wind and Hydraulic Torrent
Order of the Wild:Cast Wild Shape and Wild Morph. These Font spell slots are an exception to the rule of never using spell slots to cast Focus spells, and a Wild Druid can only use the Primal Font and Focus points, not his regular spell slots to transform.
If the Druid takes the Order Explorer feat, I would probably allow him to cast the new Order's spells as well, but he gets no more slots, just a new way to spend the slots he already gets for free.
What do people think?
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After thinking about it, I decided to change the Primal Font so that it provides a choice of which spell to cast, based on the Druid's order.
Primal Font (new class ability, applies to the Shaman as well): Similar to the Cleric’s Divine font to cast Heal or Harm, a Druid gets a Primal Font of 1+ Charisma mod spell slots to cast spells depending upon his Order. These spells are automatically added to his list of Prepared spells when he gains the spell slots to cast spells of that level. The level of these Primal Font spell slots are automatically Heightened to 1/2 the Druid’s level.
Animal order: 1st: Summon Animal. 2nd: Speak with Animals, 3rd: Animal Vision 4th: Air Walk
Leaf order: 1st: Summon Plants and Fungus 2nd: Entangle 3rd: Wall of Thorns 4th: Speak with Plants
Storm order: 1st: Hydraulic Push, 2nd: Summon Elemental 3rd: Lightning Bolt 4th: Hydraulic Torrent
Wild order: 1st: Pest Form, 2nd: Animal Form 3rd: Insect Form 4th: Aerial Form
The level of these Primal Font spell slots are automatically Heightened to 1/2 the Druid’s level.
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Why do Druids need a primal font? Isn’t the general perception that primal is a better list and their focus spells are better? Their cantrips are definitely more useful throughout the day
The cleric needs the boost from the font so they don’t :
- risk quickly running out of their core spell
- having to prepare it in every slot
So whilst it is an interesting idea it would probably be something g that required trading away initial Druid abilities for. Your premise of cleric gets it so it would “only be fair” is arguably faulty
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Why do Druids need a primal font? Isn’t the general perception that primal is a better list and their focus spells are better? Their cantrips are definitely more useful throughout the day
The cleric needs the boost from the font so they don’t :
- risk quickly running out of their core spell
- having to prepare it in every slotSo whilst it is an interesting idea it would probably be something g that required trading away initial Druid abilities for. Your premise of cleric gets it so it would “only be fair” is arguably faulty
Thanks, I always appreciate the feedback. I have toned down the power of Electric Arc so it's not really as good as regular spellcating is. anymore. And I've tried buffing some of the Cleric's spells a bit too. However, it seems to me the Druid doesn't get as much focus from his order as I feel they should, it's more of a side feature that doesn't have as much impact on the class as a whole. This is an attempt to make it matter more than it currently does. You would only get the Primal Font from your 1st level order choice, and Order Explorer would let you get some of the features from another Order, but would not change your Primal Font. Druids have a real lack of options to increase their Focus Pool and the Font is a way to help remedy that. I originally thought about ways to increase their Focus pools, such as "every feat that expands your Focus Spell options also increases your Focus Pool up to the max of 3 points", but that seemed relatively flavorless and why should just Druids get such an ability? So then I thought of creating a Primal Font, as you see above. But the idea is not set in stone or anything yet, and I'm still considering it.
I do agree about the Cleric needing the font the most because of the common feeling of "we need a heal-bot, why did you prepare all those other spells?" In 1e Clerics could spontaneously use their other prepared slots as Heals instead if they are needed, but he can still prepare other spells. The 1e Druid can do the same to spontaneously cast "Summon Nature's Ally", and I see this as a more Order-focused version of that feature. That's 1 reason most of the Orders get an appropriate Summon spell in their font. In all honesty, I think this is more about trying to recapture some of the 1e flavor than rebalancing the 2e Druid class because of deficits or flaws in the class itself.